Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The health benefits of better air

dynomight.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 471 posts

Re: The health benefits of better air

#231

Post by FrojoS »

satellite2 wrote: post #126
3dee wrote: post #99

Lately I start to wonder if the symptoms of covid-19 are worse in areas with high air polution. India is an example but in parts of the Netherlands where we have the worst air quality in Europe, we also see this. It's hard to tell. But having a respiratory disease in an area of bad air quality won't help you.

Interesting, there could be a correlation. At the same time early in the pandemic I remember reading that being a smoker had a moderate impact in reducing COVID symptoms severity.

I had read about potentially protective effects of nicotine [1], but seems like it was a fluke https://www.nature.com/articles/s41533-021-00223-1

[1] There is even a RCT on this, but no results yet https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04583410

Re: The health benefits of better air

#232

Post by colechristensen »

derriz wrote: post #210
colechristensen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I'm not interested in hermetically sealing my apartment, there are no worries of normally constructed buildings being able to withstand a meaningful difference in oxygen pressure between inside and outside. CO2 pressure though can easily be increased by a large factor (5x is easy) and maintained with humans inside and closed doors and windows. PM2.5 is easy to maintain with HEPA filters. CO2 is not easy to maintai…

Don’t those requirements conflict? Maintaining a partial pressure difference between inside and out for CO2 but simultaneously preventing a partial pressure difference in O2? I guess with a large enough scrubber running constantly it might work but it will be highly inefficient - a bit like running AC at full blast with open windows.

They do to a degree but overall composition of the atmosphere has so much oxygen and so little co2 that the dynamics are quite different.

There’s something like 50x as much oxygen in the atmosphere as co2 so a relative change of 1% nominal value will correct itself fifty times faster for oxygen than for co2 between outside and inside (ok a wild simplification, but still)

The result is that without really intense sealing it’s basically impossible to make a difference in indoor oxygen levels whereas with even a cracked window i can maintain co2 levels two to three times outdoor concentrations in my apartment.

Running a co2 fixer with the place shut up would be more like... running the air conditioner full blast with the place shut up. Yes there would be losses but they would be relatively contained.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#233

Post by krysp »

ahaucnx wrote: post #9

Thank you for this extensive resource on air quality. Yes, it needs to get more attention as it is one of the main drivers of mortality of environmental risks. One thing one has to bear in mind is that often when you optmize your home for low PM (e.g. with air purifiers and fixing of air leackage) your CO2 will get very high causing headaches and reduce cognitive performance. So it always makes sense for indoor air q…

I'd be very interested in this, please email me your PayPal!

Re: The health benefits of better air

#234

Post by [deleted] »

derriz wrote: post #210
colechristensen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I'm not interested in hermetically sealing my apartment, there are no worries of normally constructed buildings being able to withstand a meaningful difference in oxygen pressure between inside and outside. CO2 pressure though can easily be increased by a large factor (5x is easy) and maintained with humans inside and closed doors and windows. PM2.5 is easy to maintain with HEPA filters. CO2 is not easy to maintai…

Don’t those requirements conflict? Maintaining a partial pressure difference between inside and out for CO2 but simultaneously preventing a partial pressure difference in O2? I guess with a large enough scrubber running constantly it might work but it will be highly inefficient - a bit like running AC at full blast with open windows.

[deleted]

Re: The health benefits of better air

#235

Post by colechristensen »

thrwaeasddsaf wrote: post #220
colechristensen wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in offices where the CO2 levels regularly spiked to levels not seen since... pants first started colonizing the land. It's been, what, 30? 50? million years since atmospheric CO2 levels matched current outdoor levels, much less what happens inside.

What kind of pants are best for removing CO2?

The kind with lots of chlorophyll... all the rage with the kids these days (sigh... plants... plants)

Re: The health benefits of better air

#236

Post by adrianN »

colechristensen wrote: post #175
adrianN wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd assume that some chemist or other has already published a paper about that. But you could probably figure it out yourself experimentally by weighing quicklime, letting it react and weighing it again. Start a youtube channel to finance the project :)

Well I've gotten as far as purchasing 20 pounds of baking soda... my experiments thus far haven't been able to remove a detectable amount of CO2 from a room. My literature searches haven't had much success thus far, lacking a chemistry degree hasn't helped. I have found some things but not enough to come to any sort of engineering designs. I'm assuming it's one of those things that's almost too simple for anyone to h…

Try buying 20 lbs of calcium hydroxide, it is sometimes used for soap making iirc, so it should be available on amazon. Bubbling air through a concentrated solution should do something. At least at the CO2 concentrations of exhaled air you get visible amounts of insoluble carbonate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl9A8Iyc_LY

Re: The health benefits of better air

#237

Post by scotty79 »

randomsquared wrote: post #93
curiousgeorgio wrote: post #34

Having lived in Central America, I can tell you that almost none of the recommendations[1] here are relevant, at least in relation to the kind of air pollution that kills the numbers of people shown in those graphs. Smoky fires (mostly for cooking) inside small huts are everywhere in much of the world, and very few of the affected people understand the risks. Even if they did, they rarely have any viable alternatives…

Even here in Poland. People burn anything to stay warm, oil even. The unhealthy pollution starts in November then ends in March. The entire time everyone, including children, are outside, pretending like it's not a problem. People running in the streets. And when you bring it up to people they get angry. Schools don't close, everyone continues like it's normal. I'm moving back to the west coast USA soon. I could live…

Thank you. As a native Polish dweller I'm fully with you on this one. Fortunalelly I have no kids so I just spend winters at home with my air purifier and laugh brutally at anyone concerned if their kale is exactly organic.

Pandemic, making wearing mask socially acceptable really did me a solid.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#239

Post by darkwater »

ehnto wrote: post #214
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the particular bit about the subway may be informed by very recent news that the air pollution in the New York subway stations is far in excess of what anyone had inspected. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/10/subway-a... As for actual subway workers… I mean it’s not exactly a coal mine, but I would be pretty surprised if their mortality wasn’t at least somewhat measurably lower than, say, tha…

Just to point out how why this is a fairly nuanced topic, a shepherd may be breathing clean air but they're also exposed to UV radiation all day. They may have a higher morbidity due to increased skin cancer rates.

I'm no way an expert on the matter but by pure logic it's still amazes me how we survived (and evolved!) as a species for thousand of years without almost no shelter from direct sunlight and yet now (too much) sunlight exposure is seen as a cause of death. I know we lost almost all the body hair we used to have but still, we usually wear clothes when under the sun.

Re: The health benefits of better air

#240

Post by coddle-hark »

tda wrote: post #187
WillPostForFood wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extinguish candles with a lid. If you are worrying about the method by which you extinguish a candle, worrying is what's going to shorten your life, not the candle.

I have a cheap pm10 meter and ran it continuously for a few weeks. Next too cooking meat the other activity that stood out was blowing out the birthday candles. The pm10 rose to 300 and only was backs to healthy levels (below 50) several hours later. I was as surprised as you are. Next time I'll definitely open a window

How often do you blow out birthday candles?
Post reply on HN